Individual Author Record

General Information

Name: Susan Power

Illinois Connection

Power was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois.

Biographical and Professional Information

Power is a Standing Rock Sioux from Chicago. She earned her bachelor's degree from Harvard University and a JD from Harvard Law School. After a short career in law, she decided to become a writer, starting her career by earning an MFA from the Iowa Writer's Workshop.Her short fiction has been published in the Atlantic Monthly, Paris Review, Voice Literary Supplement, Ploughshares, Story, and The Best American Short Stories 1993. She teaches at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Published Works

The Grass Dancer, Putnam, 1994

Strong Heart Society, G P Putnam's Sons, 1998

Roofwalker, Milkweed Editions, 2004

Selected Titles At Your Library

A multi-generational saga of the Sioux Indians, mixing magic and reality. Set in the Dakotas, it begins in the 1860s with the tragic romance of Ghost Horse, a sacred clown, and Red Dress, a woman warrior, whose spirits seek desperately to be reunited.

"Roofwalker evokes a world in which spirits and the living commingle and Sioux culture and modern life collide with disarming power, humor, and joy. The characters grapple with potent forces of family, history, and belief - forces that at times dare them to do more to feed their identity, and at times simply paralyze them. Rich with women who do things, this book gives voice to characters who make space for contradictions in their lives with varying success and, by extension, live the "Indian way" to varying degrees."--Jacket.

Awards

The Grass Dancer

won the Ernest Hemmingway Foundation Award in 1995 for Best First Fiction